


John, 35, Has a Problem

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Ejaculate, Fluff and Crack, Other, Premature Ejaculation, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 17:54:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1950651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay, I used the best one for the example, so I’m using the next best one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	John, 35, Has a Problem

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2014 July Watson’s Woes Prompt #13, brought to you by [**gardnerhill**](http://gardnerhill.livejournal.com/): **Fun with Language.** "Very sorry to knock you up, Watson". Take a line from the original Canon that may have a drastically different meaning now, either from its Victorian origin or that means something different in another English-speaking locale such as the U.S., Canada or Australia, and run with it!

Dr. John Watson would have loudly (if not boisterously) insisted that his tastes were of the most conventional sort, for a typical gentleman of his era – has been known to even boast of his knowledge of women over many nations and three continents. But it was not until he met Sherlock Holmes that he discovered a hitherto-undiscovered … _trigger_ … for the most drastic of masculine reactions.

The good doctor – war veteran, English gentleman, and all-around finest friend a man could ever have (in one admittedly biased opinion) – discovered that he had a certain _tropism_ , one could say, for displays of intellectual acumen.

Which Holmes discovered during those early days of co-habitation, regarding the retired sergeant of Marines. Half-heartedly, more interested in the looming case described in the message than in the messenger himself, the chemist airily rattled off the dozen or so physical indices that the messenger had been such-and-such a rank, was now retired, and in such-and-such a branch of the Royal service.

“Wonderful!” Watson ejaculated. (Easy to deduce from the man’s instantly beet-root face and change in stance.)

“Commonplace,” Holmes immediately replied, to set the man at ease from the embarrassment of such a callow reaction (no doubt exacerbated by the enforced celibacy of Watson’s wound and long illness). But his own face flushed with pleasure at the thought that another could be so affected by him.

It was not the last time.

“Simple!” Watson ejaculated, at Holmes merely _stating_ how easy it was to deduce something.

“My dear Holmes!” Watson ejaculated, at the crime scene. In front of the police, God, and everybody.

“What can it mean?” he ejaculated, in mere anticipation of his friend’s elucidation for the explication of his ejaculation.

This became so routine a reaction that Holmes reassured his friend every time by letting him know how conventional it was with a one-word reply – most often “Commonplace,” sometimes interspersed with “Obvious” or “Elementary.”

This peculiarity of the doctor can perhaps explain why he and his several wives never produced offspring. They were lovely, bright women all, but without that extra-keen spark that seemed to stimulate Watson’s moment of glory so necessary for the propagation of the species. (This may also account for Watson’s second marriage which ended in divorce.)

Holmes was a rational man, and the ways of the flesh did not tempt him as they did other men; but he became accustomed to this reaction and how it would aid him in his investigations (usually by making Holmes very grateful that he and his matchless brain were not slaves to his baser physical instincts). In his own attempts to write up a few of his cases when he had retired to Sussex in his waning years, Holmes finally admitted how much he missed his Watson’s ejaculations.

Time, psychology and pharmaceuticals have cured this problem. Or so one would think. Until one moves forward approximately 90 years, to a black automobile travelling that selfsame road to a crime scene, carrying two recently-met flatmates.

“That…” John Watson said in the cab. “Was…amazing.”

Sherlock Holmes turned to him.

They looked at each other – and then immediately away, both smiling and blushing.

So it goes. The century may change, but one thing stays the same – Sherlock Holmes says the word, and John Watson comes.


End file.
